This invention relates to managing data movement between computers, and more particularly to an improved method and system of moving data between a network and a storage resource using a true zero-copy system and method.
Network data differs from data stored on a storage resource such as a disk. For example, in an Ethernet network, network data can be transmitted and received as data packets that can be characterized as being odd-sized, arriving asynchronously or without warning, and having metadata such as protocol information embedded along with real data. In contrast, disk data may be characterized as being aligned, the size of the data being known, and containing only real data. As a result, disk data can be more easily managed than network data.
In order to move network data to a storage resource, a computer system may need to copy and format network data to be more compatible with disk data. Copying data from one format to another often requires the computer system to copy data from one memory area to another memory area. As a result, data throughput may be decreased due to the overhead involved in copying data.